Unfortunately, circumstances have obliged me to revisit my conclusions of last week. I am often obliged to revisit my conclusions, as they are frequently wrong. Perhaps thinking about things more thoroughly or researching would help, but I avoid such activities on point of principle as they are hallmarks of Socialism.At any rate, last week I concluded that gender equality would eventually be achieved at least in part through offensive bibs. But recently, a news item reminded me that we still have a long way to go when it comes to degrading boys as much as girls.Most episodes of Toddlers and Tiaras are remarkable for their awfulness and for helping you realize that, whatever you might think, your parents were classy and your youthful fashion sense sophisticated (and - full disclosure, I occasionally watch Toddlers and Tiaras. And Hoarders: Buried Alive. There's probably a German word for how they make me feel and why I keep watching them.). The show, though, has now lowered the bar of good taste to unprecedentedly low levels. Wendy Dickey, pageant mom and self-professed Good Christian Woman, dressed her 3-year-old up as Julia Robert's Pretty Woman prostitute character, clearly in a misguided attempt to illustrate some of the more obscure teachings of Christ.
I immediately tried to figure out what the boy-child equivalent would be. A pint-sized Joe Buck would probably go unrecognized by a pageant audience; My Own Private Idaho is most likely too private for the public Idaho and a reference to it would also perplex. And I don't remember The Basketball Diaries being a heart-warming crowd-pleaser or involving snooty retail salespeople getting their comeuppance.
Really, a caring Christian mother looking for the male equivalent of Roberts' beloved movie prostitute would find herself at a loss. I guess she could always stick to the Pretty Woman theme instead, and dress her beloved Bentley or Ethan or Jayden up as a knee-high Richard Gere. My utopic vision of a future in which both and girls are equally objectified and in much the same way might never be realized, but I'm somewhat comforted by the prospect of toddler hookers and toddler johns.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
A recent study, which I believe is credible even though I so badly want to believe in it (I tend to be suspicious of anything that seems to support my prejudices), has found that girls raised in a matrilineal community in India have spacial reasoning skills equal to those of boys raised in a patrilineal community in India, throwing the whole "boys are naturally better at math because evolution makes them want to have sex with more than one woman and woman are naturally better at sharing and hugging because evolution makes them really sensitive" argument into doubt. According to an unattributed, but very professional-sounding, quote from a commenter on the story (who is both trustworthy and determined, as evidenced by his/her screen name: "Frodo Baggins"):
"The authors looked at some of the cultural factors that might be expected to explain the difference between the two societies. Males are likely to receive more education in the patrilineal society, and the authors found that introducing education as a factor in their analysis accounted for a third of the difference. Male ownership of the home also had a large effect; the gender gap is only a third the size in homes that are not owned solely by males."
But why would girls in the West have spacial reasoning skills less impressive than than those of the Western boys? They have access to education and are allowed to own their own homes and inherit property.
One possible explanation for the gap can be found in the t-shirt recently discontinued by J.C. Penny because of a totally unpredictable backlash from consumers: Aha! The answer is clear: Western girls can't reason spatially as well as Western boys because they're simply too pretty. If their brothers would just stop doing their homework for them, or they became even slightly less pretty, they'd develop new mental abilities. Do not despair, though. I firmly believe the gender gap will be eradicated not by helping girls develop news skills, but by taking away the ones the boys already have. Another commenter on the "The Mary Sue" website led me to the following page, which details the exciting bibs now available for both boy and girl babies. While it's true that the "high chair hottie" bib for the discriminating girl baby might seem to stress the importance of her looks, the "flirt", "hunk", and "single" bibs for boys do much the same thing for him. Soon both girls AND boys will be too pretty to do homework, and true equality between the genders will be achieved.
When Osama bin Laden was discovered living practically in the pool-house of the Pakistani military, the same question was on everyone's lips: were the Pakistanis ignorant or corrupt? Had they somehow managed to overlook the presence of a highly-suspicious mystery compound nestled up against their answer to West Point, or were they knowingly harbouring the terrorist for some sinister reason of their own?I have no answer to these questions, as I am neither well-connected nor particularly well-informed. What I'm interested in is how often recently those same alternatives have arisen as competing explanations for regrettable human behaviours. The ignorant/corrupt alternatives, I mean, not the failing to notice mystery compound/ purposefully terrorist-harbouring ones. Recently, an ad agency in Brazil created what it appeared to think was an appropriate and inspired series of print ads for Kia. Here's one of them (click on it for a larger version): Obviously intended to promote Kia's dual-zone air conditioning feature, this cartoon employs always-crowd-pleasing suggestions of pedophilia to appeal to a wide audience.
It's unclear how, exactly, Kia was associated with this agency, and surprisingly enough, even the fact that these ads won the Silver Lion at the Cannes advertising awards doesn't seem to make Kia want to be more associated with this agency.
It's clear the ads are juxtaposing wholesome Disney-type animation with racy adult-themed animation to create what they believe to be a comic effect. Were they too stupid to realize that the teacher-student ad would make viewers feel as though their brains had been flattened into cakes of manure? Were they fully aware of the manure-cake effect and cynically determined to exploit it to get attention?
Then there's the now-defunct campaign from the California Milk Processor Board, which makes delightful jokes about how hard it is for clueless, long-suffering men to put up with their hysterical lady-friends before Their Time of the Month. Apparently, calcium helps with PMS, and as milk has calcium, men should buy a lot of it to stop their girlfriends from being such bitches. The milk people pulled the ads when people started getting all irrationally moody about them. Had the milk people been watching so many episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond that they thought these would come across as hilarious, "relatable", and unobjectionable? Or did they count on them to be objectionable so that they could have an article about how people found them so objectionable printed in the New York Times and thus get more attention for milk?I realize that Osama bin Laden and offensive ad campaigns are not comparable. It's not those things I'm comparing, but my response to them. It's just discouraging to keep coming across off-putting things and to repeatedly think: "The people who did this might not be unscrupulous and manipulative; they might just be really dumb." It's discouraging when profoundly stupid is the best-case scenario. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
 And the difference is in the paycheck. I might not know very much about U.S. law, but ignorance has never before stopped me from commenting authoritatively and at length about anything, so I find myself with a number of things to say about the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to throw out a huge sex-discrimination lawsuit against Walmart.First of all (and most importantly): is Walmart single? I know that corporations are treated as people under the law. I know that they are now allowed to make unlimited campaign contributions because of how free speech is and how much democracy flourishes, so it's not crazy to think they're entitled to a romantic life.And what upstanding, self-respecting, feminine woman would not want to go steady with Walmart? Walmart was being taking to court by seemingly billions and billions of women upset only because they were being treated like ladies. Sure, says journalist Liza Featherstone, women "earn less than their male counterparts in nearly every position at the company", and female supervisors often make less money than the male employees they're being paid not very much to supervise, but that's just because, as one store manager explained, men "are working as the heads of their households, while women are just working for the sake of working." I couldn't have put it better! Women work to have extra money to buy lipstick and decorative baubles. As another Walmart employee stated, men "are here to make a career and women aren't. Retail is for housewives who just need to earn extra money." How true, on both counts! I certainly associate Walmart with men hungry for career advancement and women not desperate for money to feed their families. So it's pretty clear that Walmart would make a good boyfriend, the kind of boyfriend who would let me work to buy myself some handbags and potted plants, but count on me mostly for my home-building, hearth-tending skills.
Antonin Scalia, though, has placed an obstacle in my romantic path. Although generally I think of him as both fair-minded and good-looking, he has made a serious misstep in this case. He claims that Walmart has not instituted any discriminatory practices, and that the company should not be blamed for allowing their managers the freedom to behave in a discriminatory fashion. So a corporation is a person, and yet it is not one bit like a person. It has the right to speak freely as though it is a person, but is suddenly not a person with agency and accountability when its employees rush about insulting and mistreating people. I mean, I'd like to hook up with Walmart because it wouldn't expect me take on unladylike responsibilities, or at least would not pay me an unladylike amount to take them on, but I wouldn't be comfortable knowing that every time we had a fight, Walmart could just say that it wasn't at fault and some semi-autonomous network of middle-managers was to blame. So I'll have to set my sights on some other promising potential beau. I'm looking at you, Scalia. I'm willing to become incorporated if that's what it will take to get your attention.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Finally! I have been very concerned that repressive and reductive gender stereotypes may be losing their hold on our cultural imagination. Thankfully, two older, intellectual, inexplicably confident men have decided to prove that it's still possible to think of women as overly sentimental, funny-bone-less wombs.The novelist V.S. Naipaul has had the good sense to say what everyone is, of course, always thinking: women can't write for shit. I mean, they are physically capable of writing, but their work will inevitably deal with the fripperies and insignificant sentimental fluffinesses of a Woman's Life. As Naipaul notes: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." Their writing is formed, deformed, by their "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". And "inevitably for a woman," he continues, sensing he's on to a good thing here, "she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too."
And then there's Christopher Hitchens, whom I've made a point of disliking for many years. He has produced one of the most skin-crawlingly smug, offensive, condescending articles in recent memory. Entitled "Why Women Aren't Funny", the article asserts that women naturally aren't funny, that if they accidentally happen to be funny, they are generally "hefty, or dykey, or Jewish" (although as we all know, "Jewish humor, boiling as it is with angst and self-deprecation, is almost masculine by definition"), that "women, bless their tender hearts, would prefer that life be fair, and even sweet, rather than the sordid mess it actually is" (unlike all men), that "women do not find their own physical decay and absurdity to be [...] riotously amusing" (as, apparently all men do), that "for women, reproduction is, if not the only thing, certainly the main thing. Apart from giving them a very different attitude to filth and embarrassment, it also imbues them with the kind of seriousness and solemnity at which men can only goggle." For women, then, "the question of funniness is essentially a secondary one. They are innately aware of a higher calling that is no laughing matter." Although he claimed earlier that women (if I'm following his argument correctly and not distracted by my urge to let loose upon him a mob of hefty, dykey, infertile Jewish women) aren't funny partly because they prefer life to be sweet and not gross and depressing, he now appears to be asserting that they're unfunny for the opposite reason: because they are always aware of the fragility and tragedies of human life and are terrified of losing the tiny child that contributed to making them not funny in the first place. As he comments, "One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman's universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like. Oscar Wilde was the only person ever to make a decent joke about the death of an infant, and that infant was fictional, and Wilde was (although twice a father) a queer." I'm not entirely sure what he's getting at with the "queer" bit. Are queers more or less likely to mourn children? Are they more or less likely to be funny? Hitchens' article boasts more irresponsible, over-generalized statements and unsupported claims than...Bernie Madoff's resume (not funny)...a science class in Texas (not funny)...an interview with V.S. Naipaul (not funny, but totally true).If only I didn't have female reproductive organs and therefore see no humour in filth, embarrassment, and the increasingly pendulous folds of my aging body, I might be able to pull off of comic gem like this one from Hitchens:"Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: 'He's really quite cute, and he's kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he's so funny … ' (If you yourself are a guy, and you know the man in question, you will often have said to yourself, 'Funny? He wouldn't know a joke if it came served on a bed of lettuce with sauce béarnaise.')"Hilarious! If I didn't believe in his thesis from the very beginning, I certainly did after I clapped eyes on that sauce crack. Hitchens, while discussing well-known progressive writer Rudyard Kipling, refers to the "great masculine equivalent to childbirth, which is warfare." Which is odd, because I always thought, because so many male authors said so, that the great masculine equivalent to childbirth was the production of Great Thoughts or Great Works of Art. A man's novel is his child. A man's painting is his child. A man's philosophical musings are his children...etc...etc... And I have to say that if that is the case, both Naipaul and Hitchens have managed to produce some astonishingly unattractive, sickly, aggravating kids. I anxiously await that tiny snuffle turning into a wheeze, that tiny cut going septic, so that I can put these articles in pathetically small coffins and go off and make a whole lot of jokes about shit. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Some exciting news about women's rights and women's issues from around the world! Egypt
The Egyptian military is now conceding that "virginity checks" were conducted on women rounded up after a March 9 protest in Tahrir Square (a month after Mubarak stepped down). They continue to deny that the female protestors were beaten, subjected to electric shocks, and strip-searched (as is alleged by Amnesty International), but acknowledge that virginity checks were carried out so that those rounded up could not later claim to have been raped by the security forces. RussiaConservative politicians in Russia are trying to introduce legislation that would restrict access to abortions. The legislation would put a stop to free abortions at government-run clinics and require women to have a prescription in order to get the morning-after pill. Most encouragingly, women wanting abortions would have to get the permission of their spouses, or, if they are underage, from their parents. More on how encouraging this is later.United StatesLest you think it's only women in foreign countries who are fortunate enough to have thoughtful decision-makers thinking and making decisions about their rights...Kansas State Representative Pete DeGraaf recently made some innovative suggestions about how women should go about planning for future rapes.DeGraaf doesn't think insurance companies should cover abortion in their general plans even in cases of rape or incest. Instead, he thinks women should be able to buy "abortion-only" policies. When Rep. Barbara Bollier unaccountably raised some objections to this suggestion, the House was treated to the following exchange: DeGraaf: "We do need to plan ahead, don't we, in life?"Bollier: "And so women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?"
DeGraaf: "I have a spare tire on my car. I also have life insurance. I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for."DeGraaf later claimed his comments were taken out of context, and added that people wouldn't need the coverage if they weren't predisposed to killing their children, which certainly suggests that whatever context he's actually using, it's even worse than the one his earlier comments were taken out of. Don't be alarmed!These news items might make you feel depressed, or discouraged, or extremely angry. But all of them also suggest ways in which women can grow and improve, if we're prepared to learn from their example.Egypt: teaches women that they should be demure, modest, and virginal, just in case they're ripped out of a political demonstration and violated.Russia: teaches women that marriages should be built on a strong foundation of open communication, because if they get pregnant, they'll need to get their husband's approval to have an abortion.U.S.A: teaches women to assess future risk and prudently plan for the future. Really, the ultra-religious, right-wing, pro-life lobby is just trying to create a new generation of modest, communicative, farsighted women. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
What have various experts had to say about the now-iconic photograph of all those Important People watching or maybe not watching the take-down of Bin Laden? Obama reveals his humility and profound presidential confidence by not needing to sit on a giant chair. The presence of Clinton and that other woman is visible proof of the increasing visibility of women in photographs of important events. The fact that Clinton is holding her hand to her mouth is visible proof that women are dangerously emotional and should not be allowed to take part in the taking of iconic photographs. Things like that.I myself find the fact that Clinton and that other woman are in the photo profoundly disturbing. Any little girl or boy will now be able to pick up a coffee table book or commemorative plate, see that photo, and think that women can grow up to do things other than shop for small, decorative tables, hug one another, and learn Romance languages. Thank God for the Orthodox Jews.Celebrating the fact that "women should be appreciated for who they are and what they do, not for what they look like" and respecting "Jewish laws of modesty", Di Tzeitung, an Orthodox Jewish paper published in Brooklyn, published the following version of the White House photo: I applaud their resourcefulness! If women insist on showing their faces at moments of historical import, simply airbrush them out.
I have only one complaint: shouldn't Biden, Obama, and all those other people whose names I'm not going to bother looking up also be respected for who they are, what they do, and not what they look like? I know I find it hard to focus on the significance of the image because I'm so busy furiously objectifying Joe Biden. So here's a retouched offering I hope will satisfy everyone: Perfect.
Di Tzeitung has also inspired me to release a new photo of Stephen Harper's victory speech.
Before: After: Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Marilyn Davenport, Tea Party activist and elected member of the central committee of the Republican Party of Orange County, has landed herself in hot water by sending a totally harmless, inoffensive, and hilarious email to local Republican officials.
The email included this image: And the words: "Now you know why no birth certificate." As Davenport said when it was suggested the email might just be subtly racist, the whole thing is "much-ado-about-nothing" and she didn't realize it could be considered racist "until one or two other people tried to make this about race". (She has since apologized more apologetically, although no more convincingly.)She's absolutely right. It would take someone aware of history, politics, and other people to realize that this could be seen as profoundly offensive. Her email inspired me to create my own amusing and unobjectionable messages:  Now you know why no brain.  Now you know why no soul. The problem is, these funny jokes aren't nearly as inoffensive because they're about people who belong to a group that hasn't historically been subjugated. So I tried again:  Now you know why so gifted. That is SLIGHTLY more amusing and innocuous. And remember, even if a couple of people "make" my art about anti-conservatism or sexism, I can just say about myself what Marilyn Davenport has said about herself: "I am an imperfect Christian lady who tries her best to live a Christ-honouring life". How better to honour Christ than to send humourous emails that couldn't possibly offend anyone? Who can forget this classic, sent by Christ to his early followers:  Now you know why money-changers at temple so greedy. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Maclean's is on a roll. First, they published a daring article daringly entitled: "Too Asian?" (and now just-as-provocatively re-entitled "The Enrollment Controversy") about whether Asians were taking over Canadian universities. The fact that they didn't distinguish between foreign-born and Canadian-born "Asians", or indicate they realized there wasn't, in fact, one country called "Asia" which created all Asians, was worrisome because it means I found it difficult to determine in how many ways the magazine was being racist. Now, they have proven they have bravely refused to learn anything about thoughtfulness by publishing a list that compares and contrasts two groups known to regularly inspire a good belly-laugh: escorts and hookers.I'm profoundly relieved that Eye Magazine and Toronto Life also noticed and commented on this list, because by the time I went back to look at it again, it had mysteriously disappeared. It is now only available via screengrab in the Eye Magazine article.Scott Feshuk (who wrote this piece and, apparently, many speeches for a man well-known for his satirical hooker humour: Paul Martin) claims that he intended the list as a satirical response to the ways in which the media characterizes escorts and prostitutes. As Kate Carraway of Eye notes, though, "That's a good idea for a story, but writing it in a way that indicates approval and participation rather than satire is a problem." Also problematic is the fact that even if it were clearly satirical, it still wouldn't be very funny. Well, I wouldn't mind being paid to write for a Canadian publication, so here's my application:Maclean's Hookers - attempts to - performs sexual sell magazines acts in exchange for to the same money.demographictargeted by Rogersand Tim Hortonscommercials bysuggesting thatCanadian universitiesmight be imperiled by sinister Asianhordes.- attempts to - performs sexual satirize media acts in exchange for establishment's money.attitudes towardssex workers byseemingly rep-licating those sameattitudes towardssex workers. - read largely - substantially moreby parents popular.of prospective undergraduatesand Peter Mansbridge.
What do they have in common? I've never given money to either of them. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
I am worse than Rush Limbaugh. I don't mock people with Parkinson's from some underground lair via ham radio, but I have managed to be worse than Rush Limbaugh nonetheless.Rush's most recent attack on the Obamas (that I'm aware of - a whole day has passed since I heard about this one) involves Michelle's weight and dining preferences. Michelle Obama has made reducing obesity in America her First Lady platform, and Rush finds her activities to that end meddlesome and hypocritical. He claims they are hypocritical because "...our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date ever six months or what have you." He's not alone. A conservative cartoonist has produced an uproariously funny and artistically distinguished depiction of Michelle Obama eating a giant plate of hamburgers. By all means look at it, but be warned: you'll have to read a hell of a lot of Doonesbury to feel clean again afterwards.So why am I worse than Rush Limbaugh? Rush is criticizing Michelle Obama not for being fat, but for being a hypocrite. He's wrong, and he's insulting, and he's paranoid, but he's not just making fun of someone's figure for the sake of it. I, however, have made fun of someone's figure just for the sake of it.When Rob Ford was elected mayor of Toronto, my post was graced by the following image:  Someone's Been Eating the Gravy Train Rob Ford is undeniably full-figured, and he does talk a lot about a sinister gravy train, but that doesn't mean I should have made a joke about how he's been eating said train. I knew it was cheap and unfair at the time, but I did it anyway.
So Rush Limbaugh unfairly makes fun of people for being fat hypocrites, while I apparently, make fun of people I don't like simply for being fat. I shouldn't have to resort to making cheap and unfair cracks about Rob Ford's appearance when there are so many substantive and justifiable cracks I could be making about his policies.
This week, Rush Limbaugh acted as my moral compass. Perhaps next week, Glenn Beck will teach me an important lesson about intellectual integrity.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
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